A 15-year old boy from Louisville, Kentucky, is in critical condition after being sucked into an underground drainpipe.

Davey Albright, a sophomore at Trinity High School, was playing with his brother near a flooded ditch in his back yard on Aug. 31 when he fell into the fast-moving water.

A neighbor discussed the incident with Fox News. “It’s just unbelievable—you can’t believe something like that is happening,” said Melissa Stack. “It just happened in the blink of an eye.”

The culvert in question runs right through Stack’s back yard.

Albright was sucked into an underground culvert at Tamarisk Parkway and Melissa Drive in Louisville. He was carried the length of the block and spat out in a neighbor’s back yard.

The teen was unresponsive and was not breathing when he exited the pipe.

Albright was rushed to Norton Children’s Hospital where he was resuscitated and remains in critical condition.

“Everybody wants to know how they can help, how he’s doing, and just seeing what we can do to support mom in the mean time,” Stack told Fox News.

Already, the door to Albright’s hospital room has been plastered with get-well cards.

Melissa Stack says the open drainage pipes are a known hazard. Water rushes through them at high speed and pressure, and none of them have safety grates.

“It’s something that needs to be looked at,” Stacks told Fox.

“Obviously it’s an issue so we need to figure out what ways we can keep something like this from ever happening again.”

Wiggling Finger in Manhole Cover Leads to Rescue
With many parts of the country seeing unusual amounts of rain this summer, the danger associated with drainage ditches and open culverts has come to the fore of issues in more than on community.

An 11-year-old boy was sucked into a storm drain in Harrison, Wisconsin, on Aug. 28.

This boy was also carried away underground, but was lucky enough to grab a ladder under a manhole cover some thirty feet downstream from where he went in.

The boy was able to breathe in the air pocket, despite the entire street being under six inches of water.

Even luckier, the local deputy fire chief who was leading the search for the child was standing on top of the manhole cover. He looked down and saw the boy’s finger protruding through the cover, and realized that he had found the missing child.

Saved Before Being Sucked In
In a similar incident in Jackson, Wisconsin, on Aug. 27, 9-year-old Gavin Moederndorfer-Quella almost got sucked into an open storm drain.

The boy fell into a drainage ditch on his street but luckily several people saw it happen. They grabbed and held him until, by chance, Jackson Police Officer Kyle Henning drove by and saw the struggling child.

Henning, with the help of the other bystanders, managed to yank the young boy out of the drain. But it was not easy. The suction of the rushing water was so great it took four adults to pull one child free.

Louisville won’t be the only city where people are asking how to make the storm drain system safer.